Do You Need Your Ticketing System for Real-Time Incident Management?

Whether you are from the support team or an IT expert, you must have experienced something called incident management process. Yes, it is a formal procedure that happens when you transfer a ticket through a machine and it breaks down. This is the time when incident management comes in and streamlines the entire system.

Ticketing system helps customers in plenty of ways. They help in tracking problems, assigning tickets, and ordering many inputs. However, these systems are unlikely to handle the load of certain issues such as system gets stuck, clunky workflow, and so on. Basically, it becomes difficult for users to adapt to the flow of work after such incidents. It takes a lot of time to update the system and get on with it. One has to be structured, rigorous and manual with the approach to get on with the track.

So, the question that arises is – is the ticketing software required for real-time incident management or not?

While help desk software is good to deal the long queue of requests, there are many organizations that do not use their ticketing software for real-time incidents. They rather choose lightweight system that concentrates on automated features that save time and performs great work.

What does real-time incident management require?

Most of the companies are explaining that it is not necessary to have a heavy system to complete the work. To be clearer, it is always better to go low when it comes to real-time incident management. The system is witnessing a change from a traditional and manual approach to something where everything is automated. That explains pretty right that if something gets fishy at any moment, an automatic ticket is generated. It takes hardly any time to do so and the solution can be figured out spontaneously.

Basically, it depends on one company to the other and their very own requirements. Some like to use ticketing software to generate work estimates, keep a track on issues, and prioritize tasks. Even critical incidents can be solved using the system, by figuring out the main cause of the problem and seeing that it doesn’t come up again. There is one irony associated with the ticketing system as well, it is that the benefit can be a weakness too – too many fields can help the users monitor different elements of a problem, these can be unnecessary and cumbersome too.

Ticketing software doesn’t actually go obsolete or outdated. It depends on its functions and also whether those functions suit the needs of the firm. If they do, then it need not be replaced. However, if there is need of some advancements, then definitely one has to shift to a new ticketing system.

Process flow for real-time incident management

The process for real-time incident management has to be clear with a step by step approach. Although the procedure differs, the common ones include as follows.

1. Detection: The interruption in any monitoring system has to be detected. It can be done through phone, notice, email, or in person. If the help desk system can identify the incident and record it, the requests can be handled best by the team. The incident can be recorded with name and details, description of the issue, with time and date of the report.
2. Prioritization and classification: The incident recorded has to be prioritized and classified based on the issue. First comes categorization, and then comes prioritization. This process is done through factors such as impact on users and urgencies.
3. Diagnosis: It takes quite a long time to diagnose the issue as the team has to examine the incident and find a way to solve it. In case there is a requirement for transferring the ticket to another team, it can be done at this stage.
4. Repairing and recovering: After the correct diagnosis has been done, there comes the time to fix the problem. And when the incident has been resolved, it is important to give the confirmation and get the ticket closed. You can get the feedback from the user whether he is satisfied with the resolution or not.

There are different ticketing systems that help the professionals to document, outline, and also track the response actions for incidents with a clear mapping. When we have such an intuitive interface, it is possible to create and build the procedure and see that your team is going in the right direction. Some systems also allow you to build networking diagrams with connections which in turn will help you in easy and quick monitoring of the real-time incidents and how they are being managed. When weighing the pros and cons of whether do you need help desk software for incident management, there is a balance that can be observed. Therefore, the companies need to find that out and then take their own decision.